E STORY OF 
A SAND PILE 



G. Stanley Hali 





THE STORY 
OF A SAND-PILE 









BY 



/ 



G.> STANLEY HALL 

Pres. Clark University, Worcester, Mass.; Author of "Contents of 
Children s Minds, 1 '' "A Study of Dolte," etc. 







NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 



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The Story of a Sand-Pile 

HE town of B. is a quiet community of 
a few score families of farmers, some 
twenty or thirty miles from Boston. 
Among the few cottagers who spend 
the summer months there is the Rev. 
Dr. A., a professor at Cambridge, Mass., and widely 
known as an author. The family consists of Mrs. A. 
and two bright healthy boys, now fourteen and twelve, 
whom I will here call, respectively, Harry and Jack. 
Nine summers ago the mother persisted, not without 
some inconvenience, in having a load of fine clean 
sand hauled from a distant beach and dumped in the 
yard for the children to play in. What follows might 
be called a history of that load of sand, which I will 
try to sketch in the most literal and unadorned way, 
as I saw and heard of it, for the sake of its unique 
educational interest. 

THE BEGINNING OF THE SAND-PILE. 

The " sand-pile " at once became, as everyone who 
has read Froebel or observed childish play would have 
expected, the one bright focus of attraction, beside 
which all other boyish interests gradually paled. Wells 
and tunnels; hills and roads like those in town; islands 
and capes and bays with imagined water; rough 
pictures drawn with sticks; scenes, half reproduced in, 



4 THE SAND-PILE 

the damp, plastic sand and completed in fancy; mines 
of ore and coal, and q uarries of stone, buried to be 
rediscovered and carted to imaginary markets, and 
later a more elaborate half-dug and half-stoned species 
of cave-dwelling or ice-house — beyond such construc- 
tions the boys probably did not go for the first summer 
or two. The first and oldest "house," of which tradition 
survives, was a board pegged up on edge with another 
slanted against it, under which toys were taken from 
the nursery to be sheltered from showers. Next came 
those made of two bricks and a board. The parents 
wisely refrained from suggestions, and left the hand 
and fancy of the boys to educate each other under the 
tuition of the mysterious play-instinct. 

HORSES, COWS, AND OXEN. 

One day a small knot of half-rotten wood was found, 
a part of which suggested to Harry the eye and head of 
a horse, and a horse it at once became, though it had 
nothing to suggest tail or legs. In another artificial 
horse soon attempted these were represented by 
roughly whittled projections. Gradually wooden hor- 
ses, made in spans for firmer standing on uneven 
ground, held together by a kind of Siamese-twins com- 
missure, to which vehicles could be conveniently at- 
tached, were- evolved. These horses are perhaps two 
inches long, with thread tail and main, pinhead eyes, 
and a mere bulb, like the Darwinian protuberance on 
the infolded margin of the human helix, for an ear. For 
the last two or three years this form has become rigidly 
conventionalized, and horses are reproduced by the 
jig-saw as the needs of the community require, with 
Chinese fidelity to this pattern. Cows and oxen, with 
the characteristic distinctions in external form strongly 



THE SAND-PILE 5 

accented, were drawn on paper or pasteboard and then 
cut or sawn into shape in wood. Those first made 
proved too small, compared with later standards of size, 
and so were called yearlings and calves, and larger 
"old steers" and "Vermont spotted cattle" were 
made. Pigs and sheep came later, poultry alone being 
still unshapely, hens consisting of mere squares of 
wood of prescribed size. 

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT. 

There is no further record or memory of the stages 
of development of this community, for such it soon 
became by the gradual addition of half a dozen other 
congenial boys from the neighborhood, and I can only 
describe the buildings, government, tools, money, 
trade, laws, men, etc., as I found them. Nearly a doz- 
en farms were laid out on one main and several lesser 
streets, somewhat like those in town, each, perhaps, 
five or six feet square, with tiny rows of stone for 
walls and fences, with pasture and mow-lots, and fields 
planted with real beans, wheat, oats, and corn, which 
is topped before it has spindled, and with a vase 
or box for a flower garden. A prominent feature of 
these farms is at present the gates, which are admirably 
mortised and hung, and perhaps represent the high- 
water mark of skill in wood-work. This unique prom- 
inence of a single feature on which attention" is con- 
centrated is a typical mark of childish production ; as a 
girl or boy is drawn with buttons, or a hat, or a pocket, 
or a man with a pipe, or a house with a key-hole, etc., 
strikingly predominant. The view of this Lilliputian 
settlement from the road is quite picturesque. Houses 
and barns are perhaps a foot high, and there is a flag- 
pole, painted and sanded at the base, to prevent the 



6 THE SAND-PILE 

tiny inhabitants from whittling it, with a joint, and 
chords to raise and lower the flag, and a peg-ladder, 
the top towering perhaps two feet above the ground. 
There are pig-pens, with quite well-carved troughs, 
and hen-yards with wire-net fences, and a very un- 
developed system of sewerage, suggested by a dis- 
astrous shower, and centering in a sunken tomato can. 

BARNS AND AGRICULTURE. 

Great attention has been bestowed on the barns. 
On one side are stanchions for cows, with stalls for 
horses, and others for yoked cattle, and stairs and lofts 
for hay, and genuine slanting roofs, and doors that 
clamp and bar inside against horse-thieves. One boy 
built a cupola and another a windmill, painted in many 
colors, on his barn, but this fashion did not take. The 
doors are not large enough for the boys' hands to 
enter with facility, and so the whole building was 
made so as to lift up from its floor on hinges. Hay is 
cut and dried, and sometimes stored in mows on scaf- 
folds, while poorer hay is stacked out-of-doors about 
a skewer for a stack-pole. More recently, however, 
most hay is put up in pressed bales, about one by two 
inches, for market, or to be kept over for another 
year. Most other crops that are planted do not come 
to maturity, and so wheat, beans, corn, oats, etc., are 
bagged and sold or stored " as if " they had been 
grown by the seller. In this community, as often in 
real life in New England, the barn is often far larger, 
more expensive, and attracts more interest than the 
house. Only the outsides of the latter are attended 
to. The youngest boy alone, despite some ridicule for 
his girlishness, has embellished his house within, and 
set out moss, and planted flower-beds and vines with- 



THE SAXD-PILE ? 

out. A young lady visitor thoughtlessly introduced a 
taste for luxury by painting not only shingles on the 
roof and bricks into the chimney, but lace curtains 
into the windows of one house. Another boy-pro- 
prietor dug and stoned up a well, made a long sweep 
and hung it with a counterweight in a natural crotch, 
and made a bucket of a cherry stone. 

POPULATION. 

The adult population of this community are men and 
women about two and a half inches tall, whittled out of 
wood. The women stand on a base made by their 
broad skirts, and the men stand on ground, or on carts, 
etc., by means of a pin projecting from the feet, by 
which they can be stuck up anywhere. One or both 
arms are sometimes made to move, but otherwise 
they are very roughly manufactured. They have been 
kept for years, are named Bill Murphy, Charles Stough- 
ton, Peter Dana, etc., from real men in town, and each 
have families, etc. Each boy represents one of these 
families, but more particularly the head of it, whose 
name he takes, and whom he talks both to and for, 
nasally, as does the original Bill Murphy, etc. In fact, 
the personality of the boys is strangely merged in that 
of these little idols or fetiches. If it is heard that the 
original Farmer Murphy has done anything disreput- 
able — cheated in a horse-trade, for instance — the other 
boys reproach or threaten with expulsion the boy who 
represents the wooden Murphy, greatly to his chagrin. 
The leg of one wooden man was blown off by a toy can- 
non accidentally, one Fourth of July, and he was given 
up as dead, but found after some months, and supplied 
with a new leg by the carpenter-doctor. The boys get 
up at night to bring these men in if they get left out 



8 THE SAND-PILE 

accidentally, keeping them in the house if they catch 
cold by such exposure, take them along in their pockets 
if they go to the city or on a pleasure trip, send them in 
letters and express packages to distant friends, to be 
returned, in order that they may be said to have been 
to this or that place. The best man has traveled 
most, keeps his farm in best order, has the most joints 
in his body, keeps dressed in the best coat of paint, and 
represents the best farmer in town, and is re- 
presented by the best boy. The sentiment toward 
these little figures is more judicial and paternal than 
that of little girls for dolls. Their smallness seems to 
add a charm akin to that of largeness in a doll for 
girls. If a new boy enters the community, or if accident 
or general consent, or any other cause, requires the 
production of new men, they are still made roughly 
after the old patterns, and far below the best skill 
the boys have now acquired in wood-work. Two< 
years ago, when clothes began to be painted on these 
figures, those who were created as wage-workers were 
painted with overalls on. The question at once arose 
whether these men should be allowed to come into 
the nouse with their employers without a change of gar- 
ments, which involved, of course, a new coat of paint. 
It was decided that they must live apart by themselves. 
Thus, the introduction of hired men marked the begin- 
ning of a system of castes. The boys' own wishes 
and thoughts are often, especially if of a kind that in- 
volves a little self-consciousness or restraint, expressed 
by saying half seriously that the little figure wishes to 
do this, or thinks that, etc. Their supposed relation 
to one another in the high tide of the play-spirit, dom- 
inates the actual relation of the boys to one another, 
as two little girls who were sisters were overheard say- 



THE SAND-PILE g 

ing, " Let's play we are sisters," almost as if the play 
made the relation more real than the fact. 

VALUABLE INDUSTRIAL TRAINING GIVEN. 

Prominent among the benefits the " sand-pile " com- 
munity has brought the boys, is the industrial train- 
ing it has involved, particularly in wood-work. In 
this respect preparation for the summer is made to en- 
liven the long Cambridge winters. The evolution of the 
plough, e. g., is as follows: It began as a rough pointed 
paddle; then came a pole drawn by the small end with' 
a stiff branch cut long and sharpened, then a rough 
share, then a metallic point, then two handles, then a 
knife, etc. Thus, the plough, which fortunately did 
not get stereotyped early, has passed through a num- 
ber of stages still to be seen, and is now quite com- 
plete in form. In the case of the hoe and ax, wood has 
supplanted metal because more easily and correctly 
fashioned. The rake, shovel, pick, harrow, and dray, 
pitchfork, snow-shovel, ladder, stone-boat, beetle- 
and-wedge, and gravel-sieve, all show stages of im- 
provement, and sometimes involve some skill in shap- 
ing or adapting wire, tin, etc. These tools are all very 
small, and not for the most part adapted to much reai 
use, and quite disproportionately large as compared 
with the size of houses and men. Milk cans, pul- 
leys, wheel-barrows, carts, wagons, and harnesses are 
made with still more skill. Harnesses have real collars, 
hames, bit, bridle, and string lines. Wagons have 
wheels (made of a section of a large curtain-stick or of 
checker-board men), brakes, end-boards, king-bolts, 
neaps, and shafts, stakes for hay, a high seat for the 
driver, etc. They can be made to tip up, and include 
many varieties — as a milk-cart with money-box, a 



10 



THE SAND-PILE 



long timber-truck, market wagon, and others. 
Could the stages of evolution through a few of these 
implements of farm-work have passed be pinned on 
cards in their order of development and photographed 
they would quite likely reflect in some respects the 
progress of mankind in their production. It is in 
connection with these products mainly that a patent 
office has been proposed, but up to the close of last 
season not established. 



TRADES AND INDUSTRIES. 

Carpentry has thus proven the most successful in- 
dustry, and has of late slowly come to be largely the 
monopoly of Harry, who probably has most skill and 
the best tools. One boy made a croquet-set of very min- 
iature proportions. Another established brick-works, 
based on a careful study of those in Cambridge; but 
the products of his yard, though admirably done, have 
not come into demand as building material. Another 
attempted moulding and pottery, including baking, 
but with rather poor success. A tiny newspaper, some 
three inches square, devoted entirely to the affairs of 
the " sand-pile " was started, with seven subscribers, 
at a dollar per month in their peculiar currency, but 
the labor of duplicating soon caused its abandonment. 
At one time candles were manufactured in tiny moulds. 
Two sailing vessels, the Argonaut and Neptune, were 
made and raced till boom and gaff were broken. Tiny 
pine trees were set out, and ash fertilizers prepared and 
used for crops. ' The farmers near by go to a distant 
meadow to cut marsh hay at low tide, and are gone over 
night. This the boys parodied with a damp spot of mow-< 
land as a marsh, and over night, represented by the in- 
terval of dinner. Cord wood of several lengths, with 



THE SAND-PILE n 

an inch representing a foot, and with both cleft and 
trash varieties, was cut down, piled, and sold. On one 
occasion the boys were observed creeping about one- 
eighth of a mile and back, propelling their tiny horses 
held between their fingers, each span drawing a cart 
loaded with their wood. The functions of carpenter 
and doctor are fused in one, the office of the latter be- 
ing chiefly to mend broken limbs, splints being used, 
but the vis reparatrix of nature being represented by 
the drying of glue. 

MERCANTILE PURSUITS. 

Trade centered in the grocery store, of which Jack 
was one proprietor, the name of the puppet he repre- 
sented being painted on the sign. A toy watch was 
hung in the gable to represent the clock over Faneuil 
Hall Market, and a clay watch dog was on guard by 
night. Cans of pickles were put up; partridge and 
huckleberries, in small glass bottles; candy was sold 
by the barrel; tomatoes were represented by red bar- 
berries, and watermelons- by butternuts. Grass put up 
in bags for cows and horses was sold by weight on a 
pair of small scales. Shelves and counters, and a can- 
vas-topped market wagon were the chief features of this 
establishment. Its goods were, however, for the most 
part, in a sense unreal, its business declined, until at 
last its proprietors were obliged to declare themselves 
bankrupt, and a bill of sale and auction closed its ca- 
reer. 

MONEY AND EXCHANGE. 

The need of a measure of value and medium of ex- 
change was felt early in the history of the " sand-pile." 
A special kind of cardboard was procured, and later, 
as this material was found not to be proof against 






12 THE SAND-PILE 

counterfeiting, a species of felt was used, out of which 
small ellipsoidal currency was cut with a gouge of pe- 
culiar curvature. These coins were of two sizes, rep- 
resenting dollars and half-dollars respectively. At the 
beginning of the first season ninety dollars and fifty 
half-dollars were given to each boy, and the gouge and 
felt, representing mint and bullion, laid away, thus in- 
suring a strictly limited circulation. This currency 
became so very real that actual silver dollars and half- 
dollars were said, I know not how correctly, to have 
been vainly offered for their felt counterparts, and fluc- 
tuations in the silver value of which recorded the vary- 
ing intensity of the play-spirit of the " sand-pile." 
When the grocer failed he became really a pauper on 
the community. He was, I think, the youngest boy, 
and his monetary ventures had gradually relieved him 
of his entire capital. He was aided in little ways, and 
meetings were held to discuss the best way of relieving 
him. One proposition was a general pro-rata sub- 
scription; another was a communistic redistribution of 
the money of the community. These schemes were 
successfully opposed, however, and it was at last 
agreed to inflate their first currency by issuing enough 
money to give each boy an additional sum of ten dol- 
lars. While this matter was under discussion, and re- 
distribution was expected by some, prices were affect- 
ed, and a few sales were made at prices so high as to 
cause embarrassment later. 

LAWS AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT. 

Laws were enacted only to meet some pressing ne- 
cessity. Town meetings were summoned by an elected 
crier, who shouted, " Ding dong, come to town meet- 
ing!" These assemblages were at first held on and 



THE SAND-PILE ij 

about the fence, or near their hotel, each boy holding 
his little wooden dummy in his hand and turning up 
its arm when ayes or noes were called. Later a bell 
and hall were provided. The officers elected were 
president, flagman, whose duty it was to keep the flag- 
pole in order and the flag flying, a pound-keeper to 
look after stray animals carelessly left lying about or 
lost by other boys, a surveyor of roads, whose duties 
were sometimes considerable after a shower, a janitor 
for the hall, and a sprinkler and waterer of crops, etc. 
A scheme of taxation was proposed, but as it was to be 
based mainly on land, and as the task of measuring the 
sometimes irregularly laid out farms was considerable, 
it was never carried out. A system of fines was also' 
adopted, the enforcement of which led to quarrels, and 
was stopped by parental interventions. A jail and a 
grog-shop shared a similar fate. So great was the in- 
fluence of proceedings in this community upon the 
general direction of interest and attention that it was 
feared that an undesirable degree of knowledge of 
criminality and intemperance would be fostered if 
these latter institutions were allowed to develop. It 
was at these meetings that the size of a cord of wood 
and an acre of land was settled, judicial as well as 
legislative functions appertained to these meetings. 
After a firecracker had blown up a house, a law was 
passed limiting the proximity to the» village at which 
fireworks should be permissible. A big squirt-gun served 
as a fire-engine, and trouble was at once imminent as 
to who should control and use it, till it was enacted 
that it should be under the control of the boy whose 
buildings were burning. One boy was tried for beat- 
ing his horses with a pitchfork, and another for taking 
down the pound wall, and leading out his cattle with- 



14 THE SAND-PILE 

out paying the fine. Railroads were repeatedly pro- 
posed, but never constructed, since the earliest days 
of the " sand-pile," when they did exist for a short 
time, for the double reason that they would interfere 
with teaming, which was on the whole still more inter- 
esting, and because every boy would want to be con- 
ductor and president of the company. 

REASONS FOR HAVING NO CHURCH. 

"Why do you have no church?" the boys were 
asked. " Because,", they replied, " we are not allowed 
to play in the " sand-pile " on Sunday, but have to go 
to church." " And why have you no school?" " Why," 
said they, exultingly, " it is vacation, and we don't 
have to go to school." 

TOPOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATION NOT WELL DEVELOPED. 

The geography of the surrounding region is not well 
developed. The house in which the parents lived is 
called Cambridge; its piazza is Concord. A gully 
made by a water-spout is Rowley. Another smaller 
sand-pile once started near by is West B. A neigh- 
bor's house more recent is Vermont. A place where 
worms are dug for fishing is called Snakeville, and an- 
other spot where some Oswego starch boxes once lay 
is Oswego. Boston is a neighboring settlement. The 
topographical imagination of these boys is far less de- 
veloped than in the case of a group of school children 
the writer once knew, who played for years about a 
marsh half submerged in spots by high tide, and who 
had named continents, capes, bays, lakes, rivers, isl- 
ands, promontories, to the number of perhaps several 
score, from real or fancied resemblance to great fea- 
tures of the world's surface on the map, and who had 
in a number of cases helped out resemblances by dig- 



THE SAND-PILE 15 

ging, and who carried on a brisk commerce between 
leading ports for entire summers, and with many de- 
tails and circumstances of real trade. 

VALUABLE CIVIC TRAINING. 

The conservatism of Harry and Jack and the boys 
that gathered about them was shown even in the name 
" sand-pile," which the whole enterprise still bears. 
This designation is now entirely inappropriate, for all 
the sand originally dumped on the spot has been care- 
fully removed, and its place filled in with loam. Each 
spring, when the houses, barns, etc., are brought out 
and set up, the traditions of the preceding year are 
carefully observed in laying out the streets. Most boys 
hold that the monetary relations of the previous year 
should continue over to the new season, the rich at the 
close of the last year starting rich this year. This 
view generally prevails against the theory of an annual 
year of jubilee, and a release from last year's debts, 
that the poorer boys uphold. All the boys in town, 
even those who do not belong to the " sand-pile," are 
not only greatly interested, but decidedly more proud 
than envious of it. It seems remarkable that during 
all the years of its existence no boy has been mean 
enough to injure or plunder it at night, or angry 
enough to demolish anything of importance. This lat- 
ter is, of course, in part due to the gradual habit of set- 
tling matters of dispute that are wont to be brought to 
an issue with fists and feet by meetings and speechifi- 
cations. The accumulation of values here, as else- 
where, begets not only conservatism, but mutual for- 
bearance and consideration. Most destructive in the 
" sand-pile " are little girls, who quite fail to appreciate 
it, save in spots, as it were, and are, therefore, as far as 
possible, excluded. 



i6 THE SAND-PILE 

A VERY REAL COMMUNITY. 

The institution is in general very real to the boys, 
though in different degrees to different boys, and some 
parts and some periods of it more so than others. 
Sometimes they are so earnest they rise early to play 
before breakfast. They pour out grain for the cattle, 
and tip them up on their noses that they may eat, and 
then must clean up after them. The cattle " promise " 
the younger boys not to eat the beans, and the wooden 
figures never talk about the boys behind their backs, 
for " they told us so," said one. Of all the names in 
use in the " sand-pile " but one has been invented, all 
the rest having been copied from real persons about 
them. They are little troubled about incongruities of 
size. Some barns cover between one and two acres, 
and a horse could almost be ground up and put into a 
bushel measure, etc. Yet in a general way relative 
sizes are fairly preserved. It is a striking feature, to 
which I have observed no exception, that the more 
finished and like reality the objects became the less 
interest the boys had in them. As the tools, houses, 
etc., acquired feature after feature of verisimilitude, the 
sphere of the imagination was restricted as it is with 
too finished boys, and thus one of the chief charms of 
play was lost. Often the entire day was spent with al- 
most no intermission in the business of the " sand- 
pile," and all went very pleasantly when perfect har- 
mony reigned. Most of the playtime of nearly every 
day of the boys most interested, for several summers, 
has been devoted to its very diversified direct and indi- 
rect interests. 

THE AGE LIMIT. 

As boys reach the age of fourteen, more or less, the 



THE SAND-PILE 17 

"sand-pile" gradually loses its charm, and seems child- 
ish and unreal. One member of the circle was, I think, 
fifteen, and had become quite alive to its fictitious na- 
ture. Unimaginative boys have proved mischievous 
and a source of constant annoyance to those who took 
everything in dead earnest. Thus, it has been realized 
that to admit aliens indiscriminately, or especially boys 
who had begun to imagine themselves young gentle- 
men, was dangerous. Indeed, I fancy that the golden 
age of this ideal little republic has already passed, and 
that a period of over-refinement and ennervating lux- 
ury is likely, if it has not done so with the close of the 
last summer, to end its career. It was known that I 
was to visit it in the fall again and, perhaps, write a 
brief sketch of it; it was decked out to be photo- 
graphed; the young lady with her aesthetic paint brush 
had introduced new ideals, for paint decorates bad 
woodwork; the " sand-pile," being near the roadside, 
attracted more and more notice. The carpenter took 
to making miniature saws, saw-horses, squares, screw- 
drivers, planes, vices, and other tools, copying his own 
tools for beauty, more than for use, and, in short, a 
gradual self-consciousness supervened, so that the 
boys came to have in mind the applause of adult spec- 
tators, as well as their own pure interest. They have 
long been wont to call themselves, in some relations to 
their wooden figures, the giants — somewhat as their 
parents in a sense represent, when they have occasion, 
as is most rare, to interfere, the blind fate that rules 
Jove himself. I thought I observed that the giants 
were more high-handed, and prone to intervene in the 
natural working out of problems and events, as a mira- 
cle-working Providence is sometimes said to break in on 
the order of nature. There seemed to be a slowly de- 



18 THE SAND-PILE 

creasing autonomy, heralding the decline of full- 
blooded boyishness and the far-away dawn of a new 
and reconstructed adolescent consciousness. 

NOT SUCCESSFUL OUT OF ITS OWN ENVIRONMENT. 

Still, when the inevitable return to Cambridge and 
school comes at last, the boys, it was said, seem for 
some time to be left with less eager interest in events, 
and to be some time in getting up as strong a zest for 
anything else. It is not that they become indifferent or 
pessimistic in the least degree, yet, possibly, life seems 
a little cheap and servile. They tried to colonize the 
" sand-pile " here, but Cambridge is too large to over- 
see and copy, and they were soon lost in trying to light 
their houses at night from within, and in constructing 
a system of drainage and sewerage, etc., and gave it up 
to spend playtime in the less absorbing ways of follow- 
ing and imitating the college ball games, and making 
houses, horses, and new inventions for next summer's 
" sand-pile." 

EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE SAND-PILE. 

On the whole, the " sand-pile " has, in the opinion 
of the parents, been of about as much yearly educa- 
tional value to the boys as the eight months of school. 
Very many problems that puzzle older brains have 
been met in simpler terms, and solved wisely and well. 
The spirit and habit of active, and even prying obser- 
vation has been greatly quickened. Industrial pro- 
cesses, institutions, and methods of administration and 
organization have been appropriated and put into 
practice. The boys have grown more companionable 
and rational, learned many a lesson of self con- 



THE SAND-PILE ig 

trol, and developed a spirit of self-help. The 
parents have been enabled to control indirectly the as- 
sociations of their boys, and, in a very mixed boy-com- 
munity, to have them, in a measure, under observation 
without in the least restricting their freedom. The 
habit of loafing, and the evils that attend it, has been 
avoided, a strong practical and even industrial bent has 
been given to their development, and much social mor- 
ality has been taught in the often complicated modus 
vivendi with others that has been evolved. Finally, 
this may perhaps be called one illustration of the edu- 
cation, according to nature we so often hear and speak 
of. Each element in this vast variety of interests is an 
organic part of a comprehensive whole, compared with 
which the concentrative methodic unities of Ziller seem 
artificial, and, as Bacon said of scholastic methods, 
very inadequate to subtility of nature. All the power 
of motive arising from a large surface of interest is 
here turned on to the smallest part. Had the ele- 
ments of all the subjects involved in the " sand-pile," 
industrial, administrative, moral, geographical, math- 
ematical, etc., been taught separately and as mere 
school exercises, the result would have been worry, 
waste, and chaos. Here is perfect mental sanity and 
unity, but with more variety than in the most hetero- 
geneous and soul-disintegrating school-curriculum. 
The unity of all the diverse interests and activities of 
the " sand-pile " is, as it always is, ideal. There is noth- 
ing so practical in education as the ideal, nor so ideal 
as the practical. This means not less that brain work 
and hand work should go together than that the gen- 
eral and special must help each other in order to pro- 
duce the best results. As boys are quickened by the 
imagination to realize their conceptions of adult life, 



20 THE SAND-PILE 

so men are best stimulated to greatest efforts by striv- 
ing to realize the highest human ideals, whether those 
actualized in the lives of the best men, the best pages of 
history, or the highest legitimate, though yet unreal- 
ized, ideals of tradition and the future. 



